﻿How to Make a Slider for Amazing Smartphone Photography

While he is best known for setting intricate matchstick pieces aflame, there is undoubtedly more substance to YouTube creator BLACKHAND than your average pyromaniac. Case in point: his wooden smartphone photography slider using little more than wood and a few metal fixtures.

Beginning with two reasonably large holes drilled into a piece of wood, he glues the hole edges and fits them with one hollow metal fixture each. This first bit of wood acts as the base of the phone slider where the metal fixtures will hold the other movable pieces. He uses wood glue to attach four smaller pieces onto the top before adding another similar section with two metal holes onto the top.

Using thin cuts of wood, he then drills a series of holes which serve as the slider’s “joints”. The part with two holes is meant to hold the phone itself, while the part with four holes is adjustable depending on the range of movement you want the phone slider to have.

He takes a couple more pieces of wood and drills a hole into one end and carves out a curved corner on the other for a metal fixture. Except for the three close-knit holes in one of the joints, he starts gluing wooden pegs into the holes of the wood.

Up until now, these pieces have looked little more than kid’s blocks, but then BLACKHAND gets to attaching them. Using wood glue on the stationary joints and fitting wooden pegs into the metal fixtures, the phone slider starts to take shape.

As mentioned before, the wooden peg on the rear joint can be adjusted to increase or decrease the slider’s field of movement (it even allows for some slick curved shots). This makes it easier to get more accurate Instagram photos of meals you refuse to eat until you properly document them.

He finally caps the slider build off by gluing a phone holder onto the front joint and testing it out on a Hulkbuster figure. While not as fancy as the storebought sliders, his creation works just as well and most likely cost him a fraction of the overpriced branded designs.

BLACKHAND’s YouTube channel has more videos of him making zany, do-it-yourself designs, including his famous matchstick art projects.